Things
couldn’t be handier for the enthusiast. A gatefold card opens
to reveal three CDs and a single booklet, which contains a
brief two-page introduction and the transliterated texts. For
song translations we are guided to a website. Thus the eighty-five
songs are cogently presented and at a bargain price. You’ll
doubtless be aware that these are, as they say in horse racing
or violin circles, ex-Chandos recordings and were recorded
in 1994 and 1995 on three discs in the somewhat resonant surroundings
of St. Michael’s Church, Highgate.

Four
singers undertook the honours - Joan Rodgers, Maria Popescu,
Alexandre Naoumenko and Sergei Leiferkus. At the piano we have
that resonant and resilient Rachmaninoff specialist Howard
Shelley. The voice distribution was accomplished with sensitive
awareness and not only does it make for a varied recital but
also each song or group of songs is apportioned to a particular
singer and the choice feels right.

Many
of the songs embrace the sonorous romance of their Russian
texts. Nothing shall I say to you is a brief but cogent
example of this melancholy trait in the composer’s settings.
But it would be wrong to characterize the songs thus. April! for
example is a suitably verdant and ringing celebration, sung,
as in the case of Dusk was falling, by the valiant tenor
Alexandre Naoumenko. He’s a singer with rather Francophile
vocal affiliations – a propensity to use the head voice and
whose essentially light timbre is bolstered by some operatic
heft when required. It’s a youthful, ardent instrument though
one occasionally prone to strain at the top of the tessitura.
Note though the ardour of his way with the intermittently Hahn-like Sing
not, O lovely one. Where he does strain, as in The Storm,
one feels sympathetic; it’s a tough song and his voice is not
really suited to it.

Sergei
Leiferkus has the nobility and gravitas for his election. He’s
imposing and sonorous in In the silence of the secret night, the
third of the Op.4 set. Fate is a perfect Leiferkus vehicle.
Its gravity, its echoes of the motto theme of Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony, and the dignified curve of its melody line are all
brought out with balanced awareness by the bass. Even the rather
salon romance of the Letter to K.S. Stanislavsky sounds
right.

Joan
Rodgers is a Russian recital specialist. Occasionally her voice
can be rather lost in the recorded sound – no fault of hers,
this, it’s an acoustical phenomenon. But that’s a rare occurrence.
She sings with passionate conviction throughout. And her pleading,
yearning declamation in I await you is just as impressive.
The simplicity and grace of, say, To My Children are
however equally within her grasp.

Mezzo
Maria Popescu has a finely produced voice – it’s flexible and
even of production. I have grown fond of sorrow is a
moving song and it’s most movingly sung. She sounds intimately
attuned not only to the melodic curve of the settings but also
to the sometimes morose but more often introspective intimacy
of her chosen settings. Hers are consistently successful performances.

Shelley
is an active agent throughout. He relishes those moments of
soloistic asperity – and there are plenty – many reminiscent
of the solo piano works. But he is beyond that a most sympathetic
accompanist. Moments of overt humour are rare but there are
some in The Pied Piper where Rodgers and Shelley gleefully
explore the tripping avuncularity of the writing.

So,
time for a conclusion. These decade-old recordings have stood
the test of time. Certainly none of the voices – even Leiferkus’s – quite
measures up to the greatest exemplars of the Russian vocal
school in this kind of repertoire. But in their more equalized
and equable way they present a laudably consonant front. Shelley
is outstanding. The set is something of a steal.
Jonathan Woolf

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